The Jomon Period — Japan Before the Japanese

hey what's up everybody Commander Radix here bringing you another video and today I thought I would follow up on a video I released earlier this year called the first Japanese the Paleolithic period in Japan in that video I talked about the first inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago notably the early melanesian Minato Gala people who came up through the South as well as the ancient North Siberian people who came into Japan from the north I've also made a video on their story as well at the end of the first Japanese video a new ethno-archaeological culture group had emerged across the Japanese archipelago beginning in around 20 000 years ago and in full development by 16 000 years the interactions between the Minato gawa and the ANS had developed the Jomon culture of Japan the Joel Moon period which began 16 000 years ago was once considered to be the first period of Japanese history that was so until later discoveries gave rise to the concept of the Paleolithic period being distinct from the Jomon period in fact there is a lot of information out there about the Jomon period and the Jomon people that jumbles up older ways of thinking about the subject as a result sometimes it can be hard to sort through all the noise we've changed our view on the Jomon period in almost all facets including when the period even was while older sources can place the Jomon period as taking place somewhere around 10 000 years ago and concluding by 300 BCE later discoveries and a better understanding of trends of the subsequent yayoi period make a more appropriate dating of being around 16 000 years ago being when the German had reached their dominance of Japan while 1 000 BCE is a better date for the beginnings of the transition to the ioi period who the Jomon were is another issue for a time it was believed that the jolmon were indigenous to Japan appearing out of nowhere and slowly over time evolving into the yayoi and later the modern Japanese people comparisons of skulls led to the conclusion by some that these Jomon were quote caucusoid perhaps some sort of lost race of Europeans when we sort through the noise and use better dating techniques and genetic data we come to a closer conclusion as to who the Jomon actually were which is decidedly not European and not the ancestors to the yayoi and not even one real United people rather than developing in Japan itself We Now understand the yayoi to be compared to the Jomon newcomers who conquered Japan from them and it is from the yayoi and later migrants from the kofun period from which the modern Japanese derived while the Inu and uqns have stronger genetic ties to the Jomon even they have ties to the yayoi as well with the ukuans essentially being Yamato Japanese with a little extra Jomon and mixture a large influx of chukatko kamchakan akatsuk people became fundamental to the development of the ainu including parts of their language which can be problematic in framing the ainu as the direct succeeding population of the Jomon any more than the modern Japanese no the German were a population resulting from the Minato gawa and ANS admixture with West Eurasian derived ancient North Siberians providing features to the Jomon that led to their misidentification as caucasoids or lost Europeans indeed if one considers the Joel Moon as Europeans one would need to consider the American Indians as Europeans as well as they both derive from the same West Eurasian Source population neither did these jaw moon turn into the yayoi but rather were conquered by the yayoi and pushed to the frontiers of the budding Japanese State evolving into successor cultures with yayoi admixture such as the multi-ethnic Epi jolmon emission people as well as the satsumon culture in Hokkaido which would go on to create the ainu with the akotsk admix shirt it is estimated that the modern Japanese person may only have 10 Jomon DNA within them that being said narrowing the Jomon down to a specific genetic group is a bit difficult as today we understand the Jomon to be an archaeological culture group that existed as a gradient across Japan with the Jomon of the south in places like the uq islands being not that too different from their Minato gawa ancestors and the German of Hokkaido being very similar to their ANS forebears it was in Honshu where this gradient really showed itself and a traveler jumping from Okinawa to Hokkaido could have seen the people living there as completely different races but this video isn't just about the jolmon people who existed from 20 000 years ago all the way to around 1200 CE as the satsumon culture this video is about the Jomon period in Japan and the other less spoken about migrants to the Japanese archipelago before the yayoi invasion so without further Ado let us take a look at an account of the Jomon period in an almost unimaginable world of Japan without the Japanese 16 000 years ago the earth was slowly warming after the trauma that was the last glacial maximum and the population of Japan was facing a new day the Joe Moon had emerged as the successors to the Minato gawa people and the ancient North Siberian Yana people of the Paleolithic period the Joe Moon continued their ancestors hunter-gatherer way of life and as the Earth warmed they found an abundance of food in their land that would one day become Japan while the rest of the world toiled about in this pre-agricultural world the Jomon in many ways seemed blessed they had such an abundance of food that they found themselves with more free time than the average hunter-gatherer and when humans have free time they create as a result the Jomon have some of the oldest Pottery in the world with elaborate designs from impressed chords on wet clay that feel like they came from an Agricultural Society and not some primitive hunter-gatherer culture they also developed tools and jewelry from bone Stone and shell from what we can Gander the Jomon held some sort of animist belief that laid the foundations that could have led to the Shinto religion of today they had their own marriage Customs architectural Styles and they were more technologically advanced compared to their Paleolithic ancestors then tragedy hit around 12 900 years ago an event took place that brought about the dawn of a Time known as the younger driest while the origins of the younger dryas is fiercely debated and I plan on doing a video about the cause of the younger dryas one day what is important to know is that the glaciers suddenly and rapidly melted away leading to a drastic increase in sea level as well as a deep instability in the earth's climate the land the Joe Moon inhabited found its valleys flooded and eventually ripped apart from the mainland of East Asia by the new seas that had sprung seemingly from nowhere as humans tend to stay near Coast at this time and the speed at which this sea level Rose could have been by some estimates less than 24 hours one has to wonder how many prehistoric peoples perished in the initial stage of the younger dryas Japan was now an island chain with the uqs to the South followed by the main islands of Kyushu shikoku and Honshu as well as Hokkaido to the north all with their own Jomon populations although sakshima seems to not have been settled by any Jomon the closest point between Japan and East Asia Was northwestern Kyushu coming close to the tip of the newly formed Korean peninsula after the younger driest the Jomon again found themselves in a time where they were seemingly blessed for the rest of the world the time period after the younger dryas was a time of struggle desolation and despair as animals that humans usually hunted went extinct North America experienced the DraStic Clovis Extinction in most of its megafauna which caused a human population collapse in that continent the Australian aboriginals found themselves isolated from the rest of the world as the continent of sahul was divided by the Sea into Australia Tasmania and Papua New Guinea flooding in southern Arabia sparked migrations that would after thousands of years eventually settle in Mesopotamia but in the island chain that was Japan the warming climates led to the Jomon being in the center of a proverbial Garden of Eden the newly opened oyashiro current brought an abundance of seafood to the Northeast while vegetation across the archipelago shifted to evergreen trees and edible food in response to Japan turning into Paradise the Jomon began to abandon the interior of Japan to develop Coastal settlements enjoying the seafood in absence of the megafauna they used to hunt even though Japan was now an island chain the jolmon settled from Hokkaido to the uqs with a population of around 20 000 thanks to their stable food supply even small-scale farming took place as the Jomon were able to domesticate the peach unlike the rest of the world the Jomon had entered a golden age [Music] and so this life continued by 8 000 BCE as the rest of the world was only beginning to recover from the younger dryas the jolmon had the highest population density for hunter-gatherers ever known from this point the Jomon became what could be called prehistoric explorers as some theorized they may have traveled by boat across the Pacific Coast or rode the currents to reach the Western Hemisphere and the Americas although this has not been confirmed what has been confirmed however is that the jolmon did indeed expand outside of what was becoming a crowded Japan in around 8000 BCE some Jomon made the Crossing into the Korean Peninsula settling it and becoming what was known in Korean archeology as the jewel Moon culture it is worth noting that while jolman is written with the same Chinese characters as Jomon when Ren and hanja meaning corded where the jolmen were not originally thought to have a connection to the Jomon these were originally treated by archaeologists as two different groups in two different places that happened to be dubbed by archaeologists to similar names however Recent research into the genetics of the ancient Korean Peninsula and Japan has unveiled that the jewel moon were in fact Jomon people and so those separated by a sea the German continued the way of life of their Japanese Brethren until they slowly made their own separate ways in pottery making and culture the German would dominate the Korean Peninsula just as the German would dominate Japan until a certain group of newcomers arrived in the Korean peninsula in 2400 BCE back in Japan a more humid climate in 4000 BCE prompts the jalmon population to explode once more and by 2500 BCE the Jomon have created the pit house they are primary form of housing which becomes more complex with some even having stone-paved floors foreign I would now like to turn our attention to the south of Japan to the islands of sakishima these islands appear to not have been settled by the German during the John won period but by around 2500 BCE newcomers would come to these islands as the first step in what would become one of Humanity's largest Journeys it was around 2500 BCE when a group of people known as the austronesians arrived from the nearby island of Taiwan the austronesians were descended from a group of rice farmers who left the yangtsu river valley civilization long ago during the Neolithic period and had settled on the island of Taiwan though they spent much time in Taiwan the austronesians had come to the realization that well Taiwan was a small island and their Farms required land during a time in which their population was increasing the austronesians soon discovered that they could travel great distances in their boats and that Rice seeds didn't take up that much space on their boats one thing led to another and eventually the austronesians would Embark upon the great austronesian expansion which will take them and their descendants to places like the Philippines Malaysia Indonesia and even as far as Madagascar Hawaii and Easter Island I definitely want to talk about the austronesian expansion in its own video however the austronesian expansion is often associated with the time of around 2000 BCE to about 1500 BCE but a rarely spoken about pre-astronesian expansion took place around 2500 BCE as the austronesians reached sakishima an island chain that they could see from their home base of Taiwan that being said evidence of austronesian settlement of sakshima disappears around 1900 BCE the austronesians disappear from The Narrative of Japanese history until about 1500 BCE in 1500 BCE the Earth begins to go through a cooling phase which brought disaster upon Humanity while the Joel moon were lucky and lived in an exceptionally well-off island chain through disasters like the younger dryas they were not so lucky in 1500 BCE food in Japan decreased as plants and animals died and as such the population of the Joel moon in Japan began to decline dramatically a migrating people known as the pianpu entered the Korean Peninsula spelling the beginning of the end of the German in Japan the German cultural interaction sphere shrinks as the Jomon tribes begin to keep to themselves and stopped interacting with other tribes slowly changing due to Geographic distance the Golden Age of the German was over around 1500 BCE the Jomon people living on the coast of Kyushu saw something coming from the sea that intrigued them a group of canoes being piloted by a group of people the Jomon had never seen before were approaching upon landing and greeting each other it appears the Jomon and the newcomers were relatively peaceful with each other especially as the newcomers were small in population and kept to themselves in their own communities it was the austronesians possibly descendants of the sakshima colonists who had arrived in Kyushu and perhaps Okinawa as well similar to the style in which the austronesians had settled Papua New Guinea the austronesians stayed in coastal Kyushu and kept to themselves keeping a friendly relationship with the Jomon but not having many children with them instead the austronesians probably traded with the Jomon but kept their own independent identity in the future the Japanese would record these austronesians as the kumasol people but while the German were befriending the arriving austronesians the Dual Moon of Korea were having their own problems the pianpu culture had become the moon culture as they fought their way through the Korean Peninsula replacing the German as they did so eventually the German would be wiped out from the Korean peninsula in around 1500 BCE and by 1000 BCE the descendants of the Moon the yayoi would look across the sea towards Japan a land with a shrinking Jomon population soon Invaders from the continent would put an end to the jolmon period as the world entered the aftershocks of the Bronze Age collapse as the ayoi set themselves to see the Jomon period would come to an end such was the story of the jolmon in the Jomon period a Japan without the Japanese where the Jomon blessed by their geography and climate or did their isolation leave them unaware of of the changes in weapons technology on the continent leaving them open to attack once an enigma we know so much more about the Jomon now than we did in the past but the story always ends the same the German are not with us today though they certainly put up a fight but Japan was not fated to be theirs in the hands of the yayoi and their descendants Japan would grow into the nation we know of today though they certainly adopted certain aspects of the jalmon and in that sense the Jomon will not be forgotten and that's going to wrap up this video I hope you enjoyed I love making history videos and I love that I have had so much positive feedback on them lately let me know if you would like to see more videos like this and if you want to see the story of Japan continue we've now covered the Paleolithic and Jomon periods it only makes sense to me that we will cover the yayoi period at some point if you enjoyed the video please consider subscribing as that would really help out the channel and consider following me on Twitter for memes historical fun facts and more again thank you all so much for watching and have a great day ladies and gentlemen foreign [Music]

Channel: Commander Radix

Views: 181,048

Keywords: Commander Radix, Radix Academy, Radix, history, backstory, lore, prehistory, archaeology, Jomon, Japan, Japanese, Jomon Period, Ancient, Austronesian, genetic history, Paleolithic, Neolithic

Id: rDd54kqNkF4

Length: 21min 3sec (1263 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 17 2022